As you know from my earlier reports (see here), this was the year that we at ASOR set ourselves to confront problems with ASOR’s name and to determine whether and in what ways we should change it to better reflect what we do and to remove offensive language. It has been a long and thoughtful process, involving months of work by an Ad Hoc Committee on ASOR’s Name, polls of the membership in March and July of 2020, two special meetings of the Board of Trustees, two town halls in October, and a vote by the membership in early November on two choices for a new name, both of which preserve the acronym ASOR. The choice was between American SCHOOLS of OVERSEAS Research vs. American SOCIETY of OVERSEAS Research. American Society of Overseas Research was the clear winner by a vote of roughly 2/3 to 1/3.

I am pleased to report that the ASOR Board of Trustees unanimously approved this new name (American Society of Overseas Research) at its Regular Winter Meeting on December 16, 2020. We are now moving forward with the legal steps to change the name in our Articles of Incorporation that is filed with the District of Columbia. This legal process may take some time, but we are moving as quickly as possible.

This name is a compromise, and like all compromises it pleases no one completely. It is vague by design, and thus allows us to grow and change in any number of now unforeseen ways without having to go through legal hoops in our articles of incorporation in the future. A more specific description of what we do can be captured in a tag line that we may change without further legal paperwork as ASOR continues to evolve. Our current tag line is “unearthing the past since 1900”. The ad hoc committee recommended something that describes our geographical reach—one of the few things  a majority (70.3%) of the membership agreed needed to be in a new name. The ad hoc committee’s recommendation was “from Africa to the Indus Valley.” We will be working with our branding company to devise something that includes both these elements. Stay tuned for further progress on this!

Sharon Herbert
ASOR President